A selected group of 12 participants will explore The Dublin Fringe Festival archive of temporary site specific works made in and for Dublin city over the past 30 years to question how we understand the city, how the city shapes our lives and how we shape the city.
Michelle Browne from NCAD’s Department of Sculpture and Expanded Practice & colleagues from UCD School of English Drama and Film and guest lecturers will work with participants to think about how art has responded to Dublin city in the past and how art can create the space for conversation and action around how we as a society would like the city to change and grow. At a time of unprecedented homelessness, change and upheaval in Dublin, how can we look back at the past to learn and develop responses to our present and future?
Participants will work over a period of 6 weeks with guest speakers from various fields including Dublin City Council parks and architecture departments, UCD drama department, and various community stakeholders to develop a series of works that will be presented will be presented as part of Dublin Fringe Festival in September. Curated with Michelle Browne, under the auspices of CFA with NCAD & UCD Drama Studies.
We will use the programme to start a conversation about how art can play a role in positive change in Dublin. Recent graduates and practitioners in relevant fields will come together to workshop ideas using the archive of site specific artworks as a catalyst, while sharing knowledge and expertise from a variety of disciplines that help shape our city. We will explore differences between site-specific art and site responsive art, consider how art inserts itself into the city in performative and temporary ways and think about how we can draw on diverse strategies to develop a group response to the archive.
Alongside the presentation of work we will host a public round table discussion about the future of Dublin city with participants and members of the guest-lecturing panel. This programme will support and guide participants, provide a platform for their work and this urgent discussion about art’s role in city change.
Participants will take part in a series of on-campus lectures, workshops, exercises and projects. The on-site commitment is 1 day per week. The programme will incorporate practical and theoretical workshops and exercises. Practical exercises and the final project development will provide you with the opportunity to develop critical thinking, work in groups, engage with the city and its stakeholders and present a work in public space for a festival in Dublin in September.
If selected you will be required to attend all 6 days of the programme and to contribute to the final project presentation the 13th, 14th & 15th September. You will be required to work on the project with the group and individually outside of the specified course dates.
This programme is suitable for professionals and graduates who have an undergraduate qualification of 2nd Class Honours or higher at Honours Degree level.
Applicants without a Level 8 qualification may be considered based on their prior experience and learning through our RPL (Recognition of Prior Learning) process.
Email to brownem@staff.ncad.ie by July 20th at midnight.
Fees
This programme is free and is funded through CFA Public Engagement Project Fund.
Image: No Man’s land by Feral McCarthy. 2011
Michelle Browne is an artist and educator based in Dublin Ireland. Her work looks at what it means to live together: how society organises itself socially, politically and spatially. Performance and Participation are core parts of her practice. Browne creates an embodied experience for the viewer: work where situations, actions or movements are the material, and the physical experience or engagement of the viewer forms the nexus of the work. Browne’s practice offers moments of empathy and understanding through embodied experiences. Central to her practice is an interest in our built and natural environment, and our relationship with the spaces and places around us.
Browne’s recent work ‘Cycles’ (2024) for Carlow Arts Festival takes the form of an audio experience while cycling through the countryside, considering our relationship the land, history and our increasingly precarious future as climate change takes hold. Other recent projects include the development of a new board game about work commissioned by Heart of Glass, St. Helens UK; and Bring Your Own Chair, a series of performative events in public space across the South East Ireland to consider what it means to live in small rural communities today. Recent exhibitions and events include: Twist, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Tasmania (2023); The Midnight Run with Inua Ellams for The Abbey Theatre (2022); RHA Annual Exhibition (2023. She is a lecturer in the Department of Sculpture and Expanded Practice at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin.
Image: Michelle Browne presenting as part of Practice and Power 2018 Photo: Joseph Carr
